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Abstract
by Lydia UbD 6 and 7 as well as MI 5 and 6 are about incorporating the multiple intelligences into your teaching as well as having strategies for teaching in classrooms that have diversity throughout the skill levels. These chapters emphasize teaching in a variety of ways that will fit your students and make them feel comfortable in your classroom. One way that teachers can use differentiated instruction is through the multiple intelligence and have different strategies for each type of learner. Teachers have to be flexible in their classrooms about what they teach as well as uncover all of the content that is required for them to teach. UbD shows how the process of backward design is important by explaining that the essential questions are the ones that must be addressed and in the end pulling all of those ideas into the WHERETO framework. UbD 6 also gives examples of ways to use differentiation in the classroom one of the most effective ways to do this is to work with the group of struggling students while the others work on their own. It is all about having the students look for meaning and understand what they are using their work for in a real life setting. Overall these four chapters describe how to get students to reach their goal while also being able to be a flexible teacher in the process.
By: Sara
One common theme that was present throughout the responses is that teachers should be able to help students understand why. Why they are learning the material that they are and how it relates to the real world. Part of this is done by the teacher to uncovering material rather than simply covering it. The teacher should be able to give a deeper meaning to the content and really engage the students in the purpose of the material. By giving the content meaning students will be more interested and want to learn about the topic. By relating the material back to real world applications students are more likely to be interested and want to learn the material, thus uncovering more rather than just covering the basics.
Another common theme that came from the responses was that in order for students to be able to uncover the material they must learn the material in a way that makes sense for them. This is where the multiple intelligences and universal design comes in. Teachers should be able to explain the material to all types of students. They should take into account the intelligences and be willing to be flexible with their plans. If one way of teaching does not help a student the teacher needs to find a different way to reach that student. This also means using different teaching strategies to help students along the way reach the end goal of uncovering the material. WHERETO is an acronym that can be used to help teachers differentiate lesson plans when they are creating them. This helps teachers ensure that they will be able to reach all students and help them better understand the material. Teachers should keep the intelligences and universal design with their lesson, and also that they will need to be flexible to help all students uncover the material and truly understand it. Hyperlinks by: Cheyenne
Cory
In general, all 4 of these chapters talked about how to use their model (multiple intelligences and differentiated instruction) in the lesson planning process. Both books talked about there respective ideas, differentiated instruction and multiple intelligences, but they both talked about integrating very similar kinds of lessons due to the compatibility of both ideas. UBD chapter 6 mainly talked about how a couple of different strategies a teacher can use in a differentiated classroom. But the biggest idea I got out of it was that a teacher needs to have a game plan going into a lesson, but can’t only stick to it. As a teacher, I need to know how adapt my lesson if I feel it is not going to fit the needs of my students at the time. I need to think quick on my feet. UBD chapter 7 mainly talked about how teach for understanding in a differentiated classroom. It also gave us the three strategies to use to make sure our students are uncovering information, not just glossing over it. These three ideas are: essential questions (used to broaden ideas and thinking for the subject as a whole), the six facets of understanding (which are considered when generating lessons), and WHERETO (which is an acronym reminding you of how to make a lesson differentiated during the creation process). I personally found the WHERETO most helpful, and will keep it in the back of my mind when I become a teacher. The two chapters for MI talked about similar ideas, just in the context of the multiple intelligence model. Chapter 5 just explained how the multiple intelligence model plays into curriculum building. Every teacher should consider how their students learn when they are making a lesson plan. In the beginning of my teaching career, this will be hard. But as I learn student’s general tendencies, it will be very easy to start implementing the multiple intelligences model in my lessons. Chapter 6 built right off of chapter 5; in fact, chapter 6 was about expanding a list of strategies teachers can use to appeal certain kinds of learners, making in depth descriptions of how the lesser obvious subjects can use it. As I was reading this section, I found myself highlighting and writing notes about how I can use certain strategies when I’m a teacher.
Sarah
The main idea that I got out of all these chapters was how to teach. The two MI chapters talked about how to teach in a way that incorporates all the multiple intelligences. In chapter 5 of MI I learned about how much classroom time is typically spent on teachers talking at students, such as giving directions and lecturing. This chapter also had a big emphasize on hands-on learning, self-reflection, and pictures/video clips being incorporated into lessons. Chapter 6 in MI will have a big impact on me when I am teaching in the classroom and when I am planning out my lessons. Chapter 6 gave 5 examples of teaching strategies for each multiply intelligence. Some of the ideas for each intelligence could work for more than one MI. These are the strategies that will have the biggest impact on me when I am teaching and planning lessons since they will help me reach more students. Some of the strategies I think will work for multiple MIs are journal writing, classifications, Socratic questioning, color cues, hands-on thinking, mood music, personal connections, and window learning. One of the main things that I got out of UbD chapter 6 was that students should always see the immediate connection. I feel like a lot of students ask the question “when will this be useful in real life?” and most of the time there is no answer or the answer applies to something that is so far in the future that the teacher basically said nothing. The idea that students should see the immediate connection to their lives or their futures will change the way that students view the material that the teacher is presenting. This idea will impact the way that I answer that question. I will try to answer that question when planning my lessons and I will try to make sure that I can answer that question with an answer that will immediately connect to my students’ lives not just an answer that will apply 5-10 years down the road. The biggest idea that I got out of chapter 7 of UbD was WHERETO. I learned what each letter means and how it will affect the next stage of making lesson plans and creating a unit.
Lydia
These four chapters were based on how to get your students interested in the content that is being taught. UbD suggests that having alternative ways of teaching may be an effective way to get students more engaged. Some of these examples include strategies such as working with the students, parents and other teachers to design a lesson that may work well for the class. Teachers also have to make sure the content has meaning and the students are understanding the content that is being taught. To have both of these teachers must make sure that the learning environment is organized and allows the students to explore. This also connects to teachers “uncovering the content” instead of just covering it. Students will not learn if you go through a lesson too fast just to say that you have taught it. As a teacher you have to reach your students learning needs in a number of different strategies. MI talks about the different strategies that can be used to hook the students into a lesson. Some of which include things like having Choice Time, Mood Music, Journal Writing, Color Cues, and Hands-On Thinking. Many of these activities have just one learning style in mind but you can use each one to reach out to a student in different ways. MI also emphasizes the importance of building lessons that tell the students what the big idea is so they know how it relates to their life or the world around them and allows them to uncover the content at the same time. One way of doing this is brainstorming ideas to your teaching approach to different students. As a teacher you can work with a small group or the whole class collectively and still be able to get through to your students. This will all impact me and my class because it will challenge me as a teacher to stop and think of all the different people I need to teach and how each one of them will learn the best. I also need to find ways of helping all of the different learning styles at once and be able to balance the unit between each of these learning styles. This will affect my class because they will all have a point during the class where they can all do their best at what they are good at.
Dominick
After reading these chapters there are a few common themes among them that are noticeable. The most noteworthy and important one among these themes is appealing to students different learning styles and multiple intelligences. In chapter 5 of the MI book the author talks about the different types of activities that can be explored for each intelligence. For linguistic there is brainstorming, debates, lectures and many other activities. For logical and mathematical activities there are activities such as creating codes, science thinking, socratic questioning, scientific demonstrations and others. For spatial there is 3-D construction, idea sketching, optical illusions, etc. For kinesthetic learners there is body answers, body maps, classroom theater, etc. For music there is creating melodies for concepts, music appreciation, playing percussion instruments, etc. Interpersonal includes board games, conflict involvement, group brainstorming sessions, etc. Interpersonal has goal setting sessions, independent studying, choice time, etc. Naturalists activities include gardening, pet in the classroom, plants as props, etc. Giving these various examples of different activities teachers can do with students of multiple intelligences furthered my understanding of them and also helped me to keep these activities in mind to use in my classroom. I was extremely happy to see that the next chapter of MI elaborated further on these activities, so now I know how to to them. The chapter goes in depth with some of these activities. For example with the music activities such as raps, songs, chants and rhythms a good description is provided to help the reader understand how to go about doing the activity in a classroom environment. Both of these chapter I found especially useful. The UBD chapters explored similar themes and concepts, such as appealing to the multiple intelligences and teaching to connect with those students. Chapter 6 of UBD kicks off by stating how important is for students to understand the basic concepts presented in the class. It also goes onto talk about how vital it is for teachers to be clear about what the goals of the class are. These two chapters come together when the WHERETO model is presented. The W stands for what and why they are learning this, the H is how to hook the students in, E is how to equip the students with a mastery of their knowledge, R is having students rethink what they have learned, E is self-evaluation of the student, the T is tailoring to the teaching and the O is how will learning experiences be organized.
Synthesis What seems to be the most common theme here is that the chapters went into great detail about the different types of learners and activities that teachers can do in order to meet those students’ needs. Differentiated instruction was another common theme, particularly in the UBD readings. WHERETO model also seemed to come up a lot and to me personally seems to be extremely important for future educators to look at. After exploring for a little while I found a website that I feel has directly to do with the readings we have due today. http://teach.com/what/teachers-teach/learning-styles
Shane
The four chapters we were required to read cover a wide variety of topics. The ones I found most important to what we are doing in class and will need in our future classrooms would be teaching strategies, developing lesson plans and some flexibility in the classroom. The reading touches upon how students can think at a higher level in the classroom as well as how teachers can engage students in the content areas they work with. This is important to me because as a teacher it tends to help if students like you and like your class and are excited to be there. The important elements that we learned about for flexibility as a teacher had to do with how to use time, resources, space, how to group students, strategies for learning and strategies for teaching. The over lap from Multiple intelligences would be once again how to use the theory of multiple intelligences in a classroom. The biggest part of MI was how to use a hook for our students. This is useful because in class right now we are focusing on lesson plans and a hook plays a big part in that process. Multiple intelligences also touches upon teaching strategies for the our students MI needs. A few useful ones I liked and would like to use would be; visualization, storytelling and color cues. There were more helpful strategies those are just the ones I found helpful and would like to read more about. The last important thing I could relate to would be the WHERETO model. The acronym was extremely helpful and I already have it saved away in my folder. I feel as if the WHERETO may end up being the most important part of the reading because Stage 3 I feel is going to revolve around this a lot. Most of the information from multiple intelligences was overlap, but comparing the readings to one another opened up a different perspective. Each book still had its own ideas, but held the same important message.
Sara
In these four chapters I found many similarities. I found the overall idea of the chapters was how to actually implement the ideas that we have learned about into the classroom. Chapter five of Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design discuss how as teachers we need to be sure that we are enriching all of our students. It is not enough to challenge students who exceed in our classrooms, and simply let students who need some extra help not challenge themselves. They cannot simply be given busy work, they need just as much enrichment as every other student in the classroom. Another idea that they discuss is that it will benefit the student greatly if we share our desired outcomes with the students. This way expectations are clear and students know and understand what the end result should be. This chapter also suggests that we need to guide students to answers, rather than giving students the answers. This is important because it gives students the chance to truly understand a concept rather than just memorize facts for a test. This relates chapter seven of the same book, when they discuss the difference between covering material and uncovering material. As teachers we want to uncover material, instead of covering the material. By uncovering the material we allow students to fully grasp the understandings of the material, and allow students to uncover what the information truly means and how to further use the information. Rather than simply covering the material and having students memorize things for a test, and then move on without allowing students to fully understand concepts. This information is backed in both of the chapters of Multiple Intelligences. They discuss different ways you can use the intelligences in the classroom, and how they use of them greatly enhances a student’s understanding of the material. By using emphasizing the different intelligences it gives students a better chance to truly understand the material rather than just memorize it. A kinesthetic learner may be able to memorize a concept and get an A on a summative test, however they may not understand or remember that information. By teaching in a way that supports a kinesthetic learner they would have a much better chance at retaining the information rather than just memorizing for a test.
Rhi
Chapter 5 of MI talks about being an educator of all the intelligences, which is similar to chapter 7 of UbD and the WHERETO framework. They are worded different but they are similar. The T in WHERETO is for Tailor. It means to tailor the teaching and learning activities to address the different types of leaners. DI and MI are similar because DI accounts for more factors, but MI goes into great detail about the intelligences and activities around them. The MI book gives a lot of ways to teach to different intelligences in chapter 6, which could be a difference in the books because Mi focuses a lot on specific ways to teach different leaners whereas DI is more broad and talks about differentiation as a whole.
By changing the different elements of the classroom environment, the teacher can reach different intelligences from different people. This is not asking the teacher to be an expert in every different areas, but is asking that the teacher always be developing approaches that benefit the students. This is similar to what we've been learning through the meaningful engaged learning model.
Understanding the material should be the most important aspect of teaching. If you cover too many different topics in a year, the students won't retain much of what they've heard (or not heard). When you teach students to understand the material, you then become a successful teacher. The more successful of a teacher you become, the better you are able to get the students to a level of understanding, allowing you to cover more topics.
Cheyenne
These chapters emphasized altering curriculum to reach a broad range of students. Every student is different and has different learning styles and intelligences and it is important that we keep all of these students in mind when we are creating our units. One of the concepts that was brought up, and that was reflected throughout both readings, is that of universal design. Universal design is the idea that everything should be built or created with everyone in mind. In architecture, this means planning for people with physical disabilities. In the classroom, it means planning your curriculums around people with different learning styles and intelligences, as well as those with disabilities and ELL students. The UbD/DI chapters also stress that all students should have access to high-quality and meaningful curriculum. Students need to be able to find meaning in the content. Teachers cannot simply rattle off facts and expect the students to learn and retain knowledge. They need to provide examples, let the students learn through experience, with hands-on activities. Of course, it isn’t plausible to be able to reach every student at once, and it’s not expected that teachers try and do this. Instead, teachers should spread different types of lessons throughout. Chapters 5 and 6 of MI listed suggestions for integrating multiple intelligences into the classroom in subtle ways that can be utilized in every content.
Aside from adhering to every learning styles, there was also emphasis on the ways that students learn the material. Where most teachers think they are under obligation to finish course assigned books, they think they must go over every topic as quickly as possible, only ever really skimming the surface of each concept. This often not only leaves the students behind, but it results in a huge lack of understanding for the content. Instead, teachers need to focus on deeply exploring the content, letting student explore it and find understanding in their own ways. As was mentioned several times, content should be uncovered instead of simply covered.
Laura
One of the biggest points that all four chapters agreed upon is that students should be able to find meaning in what they are learning as well being able to make connections to real world scenarios. However, all students will come to conclusions at different paces and through different mediums. Lesson planning must be differentiated and flexible so that material can be “translated” from one intelligence to another (known as multimodal teaching), and the chapters provided tools that can aid teachers in achieving this—I will certainly refer to them. The chapters also place emphasis on the idea that understanding often leads to meaning; Tomlinson and McTighe state that “we believe it is through the interplay of drill and practice in combination with authentic tasks (i.e., playing the game) that meaningful learning in achieved.” Along these lines, the UbD chapters often compared students in the classroom to athletes and teachers to coaches, which is a metaphor that is easily relatable for me. UbD chapter 6 discusses the importance of giving all the students the opportunity to “play the game” while also participating in “sideline drills.” This resonated with me because, as an athlete, there are times when I would rather not compete because I am nervous or do not feel that I am ready, but my coach enters me in the race anyway, telling me that it will be a good experience even I don’t hit the time I want. Then, after I finish the race, I feel much more satisfied with myself and I learn something new each time, even if I don’t run a personal best time. If I didn’t have the opportunity to compete, I wouldn’t have the chance to run a fast time let alone learn anything from the experience. Then, after the race, I know exactly what it is that I need to work on or refine for next time, whether it’s going out a little slower, finishing speed, or keeping a consistent pace. In my future classroom, I will always have my students combining “sideline drills” with opportunities to apply their skills. That way, they can learn from their experiences and know what they have mastered and what they need to refine while I can adjust my lesson plans based on how my students are doing, just like my coach refines my training regime after each race.
Katelin
All of these chapters talked about the idea of relating what we are teaching to something that every student can relate to in their life. A part of this is first knowing the Multiple Intelligences in the classroom first. Something that stood out to me was being able to bring passion and excitement and trying everything we can to find something in every single multiple intelligence so every child can succeed. It can be simple or complex, and try not to use the same ones every time, and not always the universal standard ones either. Part of teaching this way is learning to be flexible within every lesson. When I realize a student is not learning as much as I would like them to, I am going to try to switch up my lesson to accommodate them as much as possible. Students need to know that you are trying to help them, not just trying to make them learn something. Every one of these chapters gave many different ways to accommodate every learning styles, and how to do them in different subject areas. Using the WHERETO and the facets also help with these because they show that you have thought through every part of your lesson and you really have meaning behind everything. Something I also took away from this was that there could be one activity that you do that accommodates various learning styles, which is what you want to aim for sometimes for the sake of time. A few of the activities that I liked was when checking for understanding or where you ask the class a question, telling them to rub their temple for one way and scratch their head for another, just things like that that are different and get the students engaged I absolutely love. I usually have problems thinking of Kinesthetic things in a classroom but the chapters gave me more of an insight. For example, charades is a great idea, like when we played in Dr. Theresa’s class. I felt like it really challenged me to think about what I was acting out so I had to know what it was first, then think of how others would recognize it and I thought it was great.
Cooper
The major theme throughout these chapters was dealing with broad spectrums of students. Students are all coming into your classroom with different levels of ability, understanding, and with different learning styles, our goal as educators is to appeal to as broad of an audience as possible while still being effective in our instruction. Chapter 6 of the UBD book talks about many of the strategies we can use in the classroom, but how these strategies and lesson plans need to be adaptable. A teacher can only plan for so much, at some point a situation will arise that a teacher has not planned for or that your go-to strategy doesn’t work, and in those cases we need to be adaptive to our students. Chapter 7 of the UBD book gives us the WHERETO model which gives us a framework on crafting lesson plans that interacts with a broad spectrum of learners. The model includes how to incorporate students with multiple intelligences, how to use different ways to check for understanding, and how to ensure we’re using cooperative learning strategies. Chapter 5 of the MI book kind of connected to chapter 6 of the UBD book in terms of outlining the importance of planning for multiple intelligences. While I stated earlier that it is impossible to plan for everything that does not negate the importance of planning for as much as we can, if we cast a wide enough net when we plan our lessons there will be less of a need to address things retroactively. Chapter 6 of the MI book goes over strategies for incorporating what we learned. The two that appealed most to me were socratic questioning and mood music, these are two methods that I can point to throughout my education that have impacted my learning in a big way. They also are indicative of my own multiple intelligences, I feel that my inclination towards those methods serves to prove that they work in the sense that these things made a student of my individual intelligences excited to come to class. As an educator I need to be sure to include not only these methods but one’s that connect with different students so all my students will can connect with the material and be excited to come to class.
Abstract
by LydiaUbD 6 and 7 as well as MI 5 and 6 are about incorporating the multiple intelligences into your teaching as well as having strategies for teaching in classrooms that have diversity throughout the skill levels. These chapters emphasize teaching in a variety of ways that will fit your students and make them feel comfortable in your classroom. One way that teachers can use differentiated instruction is through the multiple intelligence and have different strategies for each type of learner. Teachers have to be flexible in their classrooms about what they teach as well as uncover all of the content that is required for them to teach. UbD shows how the process of backward design is important by explaining that the essential questions are the ones that must be addressed and in the end pulling all of those ideas into the WHERETO framework. UbD 6 also gives examples of ways to use differentiation in the classroom one of the most effective ways to do this is to work with the group of struggling students while the others work on their own. It is all about having the students look for meaning and understand what they are using their work for in a real life setting. Overall these four chapters describe how to get students to reach their goal while also being able to be a flexible teacher in the process.
Table of Contents
Synthesis
By: SaraOne common theme that was present throughout the responses is that teachers should be able to help students understand why. Why they are learning the material that they are and how it relates to the real world. Part of this is done by the teacher to uncovering material rather than simply covering it. The teacher should be able to give a deeper meaning to the content and really engage the students in the purpose of the material. By giving the content meaning students will be more interested and want to learn about the topic. By relating the material back to real world applications students are more likely to be interested and want to learn the material, thus uncovering more rather than just covering the basics.
Another common theme that came from the responses was that in order for students to be able to uncover the material they must learn the material in a way that makes sense for them. This is where the multiple intelligences and universal design comes in. Teachers should be able to explain the material to all types of students. They should take into account the intelligences and be willing to be flexible with their plans. If one way of teaching does not help a student the teacher needs to find a different way to reach that student. This also means using different teaching strategies to help students along the way reach the end goal of uncovering the material. WHERETO is an acronym that can be used to help teachers differentiate lesson plans when they are creating them. This helps teachers ensure that they will be able to reach all students and help them better understand the material. Teachers should keep the intelligences and universal design with their lesson, and also that they will need to be flexible to help all students uncover the material and truly understand it.
Hyperlinks by: Cheyenne
Cory
In general, all 4 of these chapters talked about how to use their model (multiple intelligences and differentiated instruction) in the lesson planning process. Both books talked about there respective ideas, differentiated instruction and multiple intelligences, but they both talked about integrating very similar kinds of lessons due to the compatibility of both ideas. UBD chapter 6 mainly talked about how a couple of different strategies a teacher can use in a differentiated classroom. But the biggest idea I got out of it was that a teacher needs to have a game plan going into a lesson, but can’t only stick to it. As a teacher, I need to know how adapt my lesson if I feel it is not going to fit the needs of my students at the time. I need to think quick on my feet. UBD chapter 7 mainly talked about how teach for understanding in a differentiated classroom. It also gave us the three strategies to use to make sure our students are uncovering information, not just glossing over it. These three ideas are: essential questions (used to broaden ideas and thinking for the subject as a whole), the six facets of understanding (which are considered when generating lessons), and WHERETO (which is an acronym reminding you of how to make a lesson differentiated during the creation process). I personally found the WHERETO most helpful, and will keep it in the back of my mind when I become a teacher. The two chapters for MI talked about similar ideas, just in the context of the multiple intelligence model. Chapter 5 just explained how the multiple intelligence model plays into curriculum building. Every teacher should consider how their students learn when they are making a lesson plan. In the beginning of my teaching career, this will be hard. But as I learn student’s general tendencies, it will be very easy to start implementing the multiple intelligences model in my lessons. Chapter 6 built right off of chapter 5; in fact, chapter 6 was about expanding a list of strategies teachers can use to appeal certain kinds of learners, making in depth descriptions of how the lesser obvious subjects can use it. As I was reading this section, I found myself highlighting and writing notes about how I can use certain strategies when I’m a teacher.Sarah
The main idea that I got out of all these chapters was how to teach. The two MI chapters talked about how to teach in a way that incorporates all the multiple intelligences. In chapter 5 of MI I learned about how much classroom time is typically spent on teachers talking at students, such as giving directions and lecturing. This chapter also had a big emphasize on hands-on learning, self-reflection, and pictures/video clips being incorporated into lessons. Chapter 6 in MI will have a big impact on me when I am teaching in the classroom and when I am planning out my lessons. Chapter 6 gave 5 examples of teaching strategies for each multiply intelligence. Some of the ideas for each intelligence could work for more than one MI. These are the strategies that will have the biggest impact on me when I am teaching and planning lessons since they will help me reach more students. Some of the strategies I think will work for multiple MIs are journal writing, classifications, Socratic questioning, color cues, hands-on thinking, mood music, personal connections, and window learning. One of the main things that I got out of UbD chapter 6 was that students should always see the immediate connection. I feel like a lot of students ask the question “when will this be useful in real life?” and most of the time there is no answer or the answer applies to something that is so far in the future that the teacher basically said nothing. The idea that students should see the immediate connection to their lives or their futures will change the way that students view the material that the teacher is presenting. This idea will impact the way that I answer that question. I will try to answer that question when planning my lessons and I will try to make sure that I can answer that question with an answer that will immediately connect to my students’ lives not just an answer that will apply 5-10 years down the road. The biggest idea that I got out of chapter 7 of UbD was WHERETO. I learned what each letter means and how it will affect the next stage of making lesson plans and creating a unit.Lydia
These four chapters were based on how to get your students interested in the content that is being taught. UbD suggests that having alternative ways of teaching may be an effective way to get students more engaged. Some of these examples include strategies such as working with the students, parents and other teachers to design a lesson that may work well for the class. Teachers also have to make sure the content has meaning and the students are understanding the content that is being taught. To have both of these teachers must make sure that the learning environment is organized and allows the students to explore. This also connects to teachers “uncovering the content” instead of just covering it. Students will not learn if you go through a lesson too fast just to say that you have taught it. As a teacher you have to reach your students learning needs in a number of different strategies.MI talks about the different strategies that can be used to hook the students into a lesson. Some of which include things like having Choice Time, Mood Music, Journal Writing, Color Cues, and Hands-On Thinking. Many of these activities have just one learning style in mind but you can use each one to reach out to a student in different ways. MI also emphasizes the importance of building lessons that tell the students what the big idea is so they know how it relates to their life or the world around them and allows them to uncover the content at the same time. One way of doing this is brainstorming ideas to your teaching approach to different students. As a teacher you can work with a small group or the whole class collectively and still be able to get through to your students.
This will all impact me and my class because it will challenge me as a teacher to stop and think of all the different people I need to teach and how each one of them will learn the best. I also need to find ways of helping all of the different learning styles at once and be able to balance the unit between each of these learning styles. This will affect my class because they will all have a point during the class where they can all do their best at what they are good at.
Dominick
After reading these chapters there are a few common themes among them that are noticeable. The most noteworthy and important one among these themes is appealing to students different learning styles and multiple intelligences. In chapter 5 of the MI book the author talks about the different types of activities that can be explored for each intelligence. For linguistic there is brainstorming, debates, lectures and many other activities. For logical and mathematical activities there are activities such as creating codes, science thinking, socratic questioning, scientific demonstrations and others. For spatial there is 3-D construction, idea sketching, optical illusions, etc. For kinesthetic learners there is body answers, body maps, classroom theater, etc. For music there is creating melodies for concepts, music appreciation, playing percussion instruments, etc. Interpersonal includes board games, conflict involvement, group brainstorming sessions, etc. Interpersonal has goal setting sessions, independent studying, choice time, etc. Naturalists activities include gardening, pet in the classroom, plants as props, etc. Giving these various examples of different activities teachers can do with students of multiple intelligences furthered my understanding of them and also helped me to keep these activities in mind to use in my classroom. I was extremely happy to see that the next chapter of MI elaborated further on these activities, so now I know how to to them. The chapter goes in depth with some of these activities. For example with the music activities such as raps, songs, chants and rhythms a good description is provided to help the reader understand how to go about doing the activity in a classroom environment. Both of these chapter I found especially useful. The UBD chapters explored similar themes and concepts, such as appealing to the multiple intelligences and teaching to connect with those students. Chapter 6 of UBD kicks off by stating how important is for students to understand the basic concepts presented in the class. It also goes onto talk about how vital it is for teachers to be clear about what the goals of the class are. These two chapters come together when the WHERETO model is presented. The W stands for what and why they are learning this, the H is how to hook the students in, E is how to equip the students with a mastery of their knowledge, R is having students rethink what they have learned, E is self-evaluation of the student, the T is tailoring to the teaching and the O is how will learning experiences be organized.
Synthesis
What seems to be the most common theme here is that the chapters went into great detail about the different types of learners and activities that teachers can do in order to meet those students’ needs. Differentiated instruction was another common theme, particularly in the UBD readings. WHERETO model also seemed to come up a lot and to me personally seems to be extremely important for future educators to look at. After exploring for a little while I found a website that I feel has directly to do with the readings we have due today.
http://teach.com/what/teachers-teach/learning-styles
Shane
The four chapters we were required to read cover a wide variety of topics. The ones I found most important to what we are doing in class and will need in our future classrooms would be teaching strategies, developing lesson plans and some flexibility in the classroom. The reading touches upon how students can think at a higher level in the classroom as well as how teachers can engage students in the content areas they work with. This is important to me because as a teacher it tends to help if students like you and like your class and are excited to be there. The important elements that we learned about for flexibility as a teacher had to do with how to use time, resources, space, how to group students, strategies for learning and strategies for teaching. The over lap from Multiple intelligences would be once again how to use the theory of multiple intelligences in a classroom. The biggest part of MI was how to use a hook for our students. This is useful because in class right now we are focusing on lesson plans and a hook plays a big part in that process. Multiple intelligences also touches upon teaching strategies for the our students MI needs. A few useful ones I liked and would like to use would be; visualization, storytelling and color cues. There were more helpful strategies those are just the ones I found helpful and would like to read more about. The last important thing I could relate to would be the WHERETO model. The acronym was extremely helpful and I already have it saved away in my folder. I feel as if the WHERETO may end up being the most important part of the reading because Stage 3 I feel is going to revolve around this a lot. Most of the information from multiple intelligences was overlap, but comparing the readings to one another opened up a different perspective. Each book still had its own ideas, but held the same important message.Sara
In these four chapters I found many similarities. I found the overall idea of the chapters was how to actually implement the ideas that we have learned about into the classroom. Chapter five of Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design discuss how as teachers we need to be sure that we are enriching all of our students. It is not enough to challenge students who exceed in our classrooms, and simply let students who need some extra help not challenge themselves. They cannot simply be given busy work, they need just as much enrichment as every other student in the classroom. Another idea that they discuss is that it will benefit the student greatly if we share our desired outcomes with the students. This way expectations are clear and students know and understand what the end result should be. This chapter also suggests that we need to guide students to answers, rather than giving students the answers. This is important because it gives students the chance to truly understand a concept rather than just memorize facts for a test. This relates chapter seven of the same book, when they discuss the difference between covering material and uncovering material. As teachers we want to uncover material, instead of covering the material. By uncovering the material we allow students to fully grasp the understandings of the material, and allow students to uncover what the information truly means and how to further use the information. Rather than simply covering the material and having students memorize things for a test, and then move on without allowing students to fully understand concepts. This information is backed in both of the chapters of Multiple Intelligences. They discuss different ways you can use the intelligences in the classroom, and how they use of them greatly enhances a student’s understanding of the material. By using emphasizing the different intelligences it gives students a better chance to truly understand the material rather than just memorize it. A kinesthetic learner may be able to memorize a concept and get an A on a summative test, however they may not understand or remember that information. By teaching in a way that supports a kinesthetic learner they would have a much better chance at retaining the information rather than just memorizing for a test.Rhi
Chapter 5 of MI talks about being an educator of all the intelligences, which is similar to chapter 7 of UbD and the WHERETO framework. They are worded different but they are similar. The T in WHERETO is for Tailor. It means to tailor the teaching and learning activities to address the different types of leaners. DI and MI are similar because DI accounts for more factors, but MI goes into great detail about the intelligences and activities around them. The MI book gives a lot of ways to teach to different intelligences in chapter 6, which could be a difference in the books because Mi focuses a lot on specific ways to teach different leaners whereas DI is more broad and talks about differentiation as a whole.By changing the different elements of the classroom environment, the teacher can reach different intelligences from different people. This is not asking the teacher to be an expert in every different areas, but is asking that the teacher always be developing approaches that benefit the students. This is similar to what we've been learning through the meaningful engaged learning model.
Understanding the material should be the most important aspect of teaching. If you cover too many different topics in a year, the students won't retain much of what they've heard (or not heard). When you teach students to understand the material, you then become a successful teacher. The more successful of a teacher you become, the better you are able to get the students to a level of understanding, allowing you to cover more topics.
Cheyenne
These chapters emphasized altering curriculum to reach a broad range of students. Every student is different and has different learning styles and intelligences and it is important that we keep all of these students in mind when we are creating our units. One of the concepts that was brought up, and that was reflected throughout both readings, is that of universal design. Universal design is the idea that everything should be built or created with everyone in mind. In architecture, this means planning for people with physical disabilities. In the classroom, it means planning your curriculums around people with different learning styles and intelligences, as well as those with disabilities and ELL students. The UbD/DI chapters also stress that all students should have access to high-quality and meaningful curriculum. Students need to be able to find meaning in the content. Teachers cannot simply rattle off facts and expect the students to learn and retain knowledge. They need to provide examples, let the students learn through experience, with hands-on activities. Of course, it isn’t plausible to be able to reach every student at once, and it’s not expected that teachers try and do this. Instead, teachers should spread different types of lessons throughout. Chapters 5 and 6 of MI listed suggestions for integrating multiple intelligences into the classroom in subtle ways that can be utilized in every content.Aside from adhering to every learning styles, there was also emphasis on the ways that students learn the material. Where most teachers think they are under obligation to finish course assigned books, they think they must go over every topic as quickly as possible, only ever really skimming the surface of each concept. This often not only leaves the students behind, but it results in a huge lack of understanding for the content. Instead, teachers need to focus on deeply exploring the content, letting student explore it and find understanding in their own ways. As was mentioned several times, content should be uncovered instead of simply covered.
Laura
One of the biggest points that all four chapters agreed upon is that students should be able to find meaning in what they are learning as well being able to make connections to real world scenarios. However, all students will come to conclusions at different paces and through different mediums. Lesson planning must be differentiated and flexible so that material can be “translated” from one intelligence to another (known as multimodal teaching), and the chapters provided tools that can aid teachers in achieving this—I will certainly refer to them. The chapters also place emphasis on the idea that understanding often leads to meaning; Tomlinson and McTighe state that “we believe it is through the interplay of drill and practice in combination with authentic tasks (i.e., playing the game) that meaningful learning in achieved.” Along these lines, the UbD chapters often compared students in the classroom to athletes and teachers to coaches, which is a metaphor that is easily relatable for me. UbD chapter 6 discusses the importance of giving all the students the opportunity to “play the game” while also participating in “sideline drills.” This resonated with me because, as an athlete, there are times when I would rather not compete because I am nervous or do not feel that I am ready, but my coach enters me in the race anyway, telling me that it will be a good experience even I don’t hit the time I want. Then, after I finish the race, I feel much more satisfied with myself and I learn something new each time, even if I don’t run a personal best time. If I didn’t have the opportunity to compete, I wouldn’t have the chance to run a fast time let alone learn anything from the experience. Then, after the race, I know exactly what it is that I need to work on or refine for next time, whether it’s going out a little slower, finishing speed, or keeping a consistent pace. In my future classroom, I will always have my students combining “sideline drills” with opportunities to apply their skills. That way, they can learn from their experiences and know what they have mastered and what they need to refine while I can adjust my lesson plans based on how my students are doing, just like my coach refines my training regime after each race.Katelin
All of these chapters talked about the idea of relating what we are teaching to something that every student can relate to in their life. A part of this is first knowing the Multiple Intelligences in the classroom first. Something that stood out to me was being able to bring passion and excitement and trying everything we can to find something in every single multiple intelligence so every child can succeed. It can be simple or complex, and try not to use the same ones every time, and not always the universal standard ones either. Part of teaching this way is learning to be flexible within every lesson. When I realize a student is not learning as much as I would like them to, I am going to try to switch up my lesson to accommodate them as much as possible. Students need to know that you are trying to help them, not just trying to make them learn something. Every one of these chapters gave many different ways to accommodate every learning styles, and how to do them in different subject areas. Using the WHERETO and the facets also help with these because they show that you have thought through every part of your lesson and you really have meaning behind everything. Something I also took away from this was that there could be one activity that you do that accommodates various learning styles, which is what you want to aim for sometimes for the sake of time. A few of the activities that I liked was when checking for understanding or where you ask the class a question, telling them to rub their temple for one way and scratch their head for another, just things like that that are different and get the students engaged I absolutely love. I usually have problems thinking of Kinesthetic things in a classroom but the chapters gave me more of an insight. For example, charades is a great idea, like when we played in Dr. Theresa’s class. I felt like it really challenged me to think about what I was acting out so I had to know what it was first, then think of how others would recognize it and I thought it was great.Cooper
The major theme throughout these chapters was dealing with broad spectrums of students. Students are all coming into your classroom with different levels of ability, understanding, and with different learning styles, our goal as educators is to appeal to as broad of an audience as possible while still being effective in our instruction. Chapter 6 of the UBD book talks about many of the strategies we can use in the classroom, but how these strategies and lesson plans need to be adaptable. A teacher can only plan for so much, at some point a situation will arise that a teacher has not planned for or that your go-to strategy doesn’t work, and in those cases we need to be adaptive to our students. Chapter 7 of the UBD book gives us the WHERETO model which gives us a framework on crafting lesson plans that interacts with a broad spectrum of learners. The model includes how to incorporate students with multiple intelligences, how to use different ways to check for understanding, and how to ensure we’re using cooperative learning strategies. Chapter 5 of the MI book kind of connected to chapter 6 of the UBD book in terms of outlining the importance of planning for multiple intelligences. While I stated earlier that it is impossible to plan for everything that does not negate the importance of planning for as much as we can, if we cast a wide enough net when we plan our lessons there will be less of a need to address things retroactively. Chapter 6 of the MI book goes over strategies for incorporating what we learned. The two that appealed most to me were socratic questioning and mood music, these are two methods that I can point to throughout my education that have impacted my learning in a big way. They also are indicative of my own multiple intelligences, I feel that my inclination towards those methods serves to prove that they work in the sense that these things made a student of my individual intelligences excited to come to class. As an educator I need to be sure to include not only these methods but one’s that connect with different students so all my students will can connect with the material and be excited to come to class.